About 3 500 workers will down their tools on Monday at Africa’s largest medical research service unless their demand for a 12% wage increase is met.
The National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS), a South African research institute, was given 48 hours’ notice on Thursday by the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) that the NHLS employees would strike. This follows a stalemate after four months of negotiations between the union and the institute about the workers’ employment conditions.
While the centrepiece of Nehawu’s demands is a blanket 12% wage increase, the union is also demanding an increase in the institution’s contribution to the workers’ medical aid, from R1 200 to R1 400, and an increase in the workers’ living allowance from R770 to R1 000.
The NHLS was founded in October 2001 by the amalgamation of all the previously independent medical research organisations, university pathology departments and public-sector laboratories throughout the country.
John Robertson, CEO of the NHLS, says that this is the source of the present dispute.
”We had so many diverse entities coming together, with different payrolls and different conditions of service, and it was up to us to try and create a standard set of services and salaries for everyone,” he said.
”That was our departure point, but Nehawu and the other unions’ [Public Servants Association and the Public and Allied Workers Union of South Africa] departure points were a 12% salary increase across the board.”
Of the 12% increase, Robertson said, the standardisation of living allowances, medical aid and salaries cost the company 8%. The remaining 4% was put into salary increases, but ”on top of this Nehawu still wants a separate 12% salary increase”.
Last month Nehawu, which represents about 900 people, the majority of NHLS staff, filed a formal dispute with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration. ”We proposed a number of options … but the employers came with a closed mind,” said Jabulani Khanyile, the national public health coordinator at Nehawu. ”The following day the NHLS management indicated that they were going to implement unilaterally their proposals.”
This week Nehawu held a vote for its members to decide whether or not to strike. ”About 75% of the workers voted in favour of the strike,” said Khanyile.
”There seem to be a difference in principle between what we’re trying to do and what they want to achieve,” said Robertson.
The NHLS has 250 laboratories and an estimated R1-billion annual turnover. Just last month Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang contracted the institute to provide all the pathology, research and data relating to the roll-out of anti-retroviral drugs.